Installation guides

Desktop computers

osu!

Windows

Minimum System Requirements

How to install

Locate the file you just downloaded, double-click on it and follow the instructions to install osu!.

Run the game by double-clicking on the newly-created osu! icon on your desktop or the new entry in the Start menu.

The main menu should show up. You should be prompted to either log in using an osu! account (create one by clicking on the appropriate button) or play offline.

Playing online will enable you to register your scores in the global rankings and get a rank.

Enjoy your osu! experience!

Adding Beatmaps

A beatmap is a .osz file containing the song and other files needed to play.

Go to the beatmap listing. Find a song that you like and click on its title to open its webpage.

Download it by clicking on the big pink "Download beatmap!" button (or, if available, the purple "Without Video" button if you don't want to download the included video).

At this point, there are several ways to get your beatmaps installed in osu!:

If your browser asks you what it should do with the file, choose "Open with osu!" if you can. The file will be downloaded, and osu! will automatically open and import the file.

If you choose to save the file instead, or your browser doesn't give you the choice, download the file, go to the download directory, and either double-click on it to automatically import it in osu! or, if osu! is already opened, drag and drop the newly-downloaded file directly in the game window. If you are tech-savvy, be aware that you can also move your .osz files in the "Songs" folder of osu!'s installation directory (default is Program Files).

Go play your beatmap! Press F5 at the song select screen if the list isn't automatically refreshed.

Note: There are a lot of alternative ways to download a beatmap. Here's a short list:

Download beatmap packs. They are archive files that combine several beatmaps at once. They generally come as a .zip or .rar archive. Download one, extract it with your favorite archive extractor (e.g. 7-Zip and import the extracted .osz files as you would do normally.

Use a mirror. Mirrors are kindly offered by the community and let you download beatmaps without the need of going through the osu! website and its download quota. The most popular is yas-online but others are also available throughout the web.

OS X (beta version)

How to install

The first time you run osu!, it may take up to 5 minutes to start. This is due to X11 (the graphical subsystem) rebuilding a font cache.

Adding Beatmaps

Original post
For a picture guide, press the Original post link above.

Right-click osu!.app and select "Show Package Contents"

If you are moving only one .osz file, drag that directly to osu!.app icon. The map will be extracted.

Navigate to "Contents/Resources/winePrefix/drive_c/osu/Songs"

Drag your .osz (or .zip) files to the "Songs" file

Open your osu!.app and go to song selection or hit "F5".

Importing songs may get stuck. If this happens, try "ALT-F4" or "ESC" mashing, or quit osu! and run it again.

Notes

This build will always start the updater when you run it. It will update to newer releases and therefore when the remaining issues are fixed you will automatically receive the fixes.

You can make a shortcut to the songs folder on your desktop by dragging the folder while holding command and option. This should make it easier to load new maps.

Linux (using Wine)

This tutorial may not be up to date! Check out the last pages of this thread in the forums
to find a way provided by the community to install the newest versions of osu!.

How to install

Basic setup.

First, check your Graphic Card.

For best results, get a nVIDIA-Chipset.

On Intel graphic cards, you need to enable Vsync.

On AMD HD**** cards you need to disable the shaders.

Install "Wine". (If you didn't already)

Getting Wine to work.

For Ubuntu/GNU/LINUX Debian, just do:

sudo apt-get -y install wine

For Gentoo / Sabayon do:

sudo emerge wine

For Fedora do:

sudo dnf install wine

For any other OS read the install-manual of the system.

Create a 32 bit wine prefix

mkdir ~/.wine-osu

cd ~/.wine-osu

export WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-osu WINEARCH=win32

winecfg

Getting osu! to work.

You will need to use winetricks...

As normal user,

winetricks install dotnet20 ie7

Next, download the latest osu! Windows installer and launch it.

Install osu!

Launch osu!

Please keep in mind that each time you will want to launch/install osu! or configure this wine prefix, the WINEARCH and WINEPREFIX environment variables must be set as written above (even for the application launcher)

FAQ and troubleshooting

osu!

You need to register for the site first. Registration is free and very quick, and as well as giving you the benefit of accessing beatmap downloads, it also allows you to obtain a ranking on the online leaderboards and chat to other players in-game. So there's no excuse not to sign up!

I can't play the Beatmap I downloaded!

Your file is incomplete/corrupted. Did you just cancel the download half-way? If so, search back that song name and download it again and stay till the song has completed it's download properly.

osu! will put the incomplete/corrupted song under "Failed" folder in "Songs" folder file.

Something else going wrong?

If you come across a bug or error not listed above, check out the Bug Reports forum and post there (searching through existing threads first is highly recommended). Someone will definitely be around to help. Just make sure you speak your points clearly and provide a proof to back-up your points (like a screenshot, video, and/or the steps to reproduce).

Also, please consider using the osu! IRC channel if you are bit skeptical to post at Bug Reports section.

osu!droid

T-Aiko

I can't play on my Android phone!

Do you happen to be using a Motorola smartphone? There seems to be a bug in Motorola Android firmware that causes the game to crash when pressing play without even letting you send an error report. The only recommendation to-do is to install a (Stock) Google ROM.

If you discover any (bugs/problems), please post at this forum post complete with what smartphone you are using and the steps to reproduce the problem.